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61 Company Car To make sure, they took out the back seat, left a dirty hole for hauling supplies. My father worked for American Tobacco, when smoking was glamorous & profits fatter. We set up little red & white folding chairs in the back hole of the Ford Fairlane sedan, 1960 black with red vinyl interior, me & my sister, 7 years before Woodstock, we rock/n rolled crazy down the street. I was 10 & didn’t know the history of the company store. Laughing & falling over /my father’s eyes in the rear-view/my mother scowling, I didn’t know the shame of it. Our screams of stupid joy reminded them of what we were: working-class, afraid of being seen riding around, afraid my father would lose his job. He couldn’t take us to school or church, but he did. He was the builder of our lives, carving a way through the lies around us. Is that why he yelled so much at our silliness? Where did he put his rage, as he pulled the black car into the garage & turned the key? I saw him late one night under the side-house light: he took it & put it stone by stone in the driveway wall, heaving & radiant. I saw him give rage a body, breathe it alive. ...

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